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One Last Journey Mom


My husband and I had the privilege of being called to the hospital to be with a daughter and son's dying mother until they could arrive. 

I thank my Mother for giving me a mindset to see see the honor in death.  She worked at the nursing home when I was little.  Many times she held someone's hand and watched the veil between the temporal and eternal ripple as they walked into their final home.

Death was a way of life, my Dad said to me one night as we buried my bunnies.  We grieve, but death is part of life.  

Too many times, death comes from tragedy and breaks our world into a million pieces.  Jolting and traumatic.  I've gone with my husband on too many of these calls.  I held my Dad up as he wept when tragedy struck our ranch and took a young man from the world.

Last night was precious. Peaceful.  The way death should be.   
An older lady.  She was at the nursing home for three weeks and had just came to the hospital.  The nurses already loved her as she worried about them.  Tears ran down their cheeks.

She had just beaten her daughter at Yatsee and told her she didn't want to go to the nursing home and was ready to go on.  One last journey.  A final home.  

I held one hand and a nurse another as my husband prayed.  I sensed her spirit struggle with worry.  We prayed together for her children.  Her daughter arrived.  "I love you Mom.  It's o.k.  Go on."

I sat outside the door and prayed while my husband waited with her family.  Every now and then the daughter would say, "I love you Mom. It's o.k."

She slipped from life to death to life in a matter of minutes.  

I sobbed within my heart as I selfishly thought of my own death.  
Will my husband and boys know the depth of my love for them?  Will I have grandchildren and great grandchildren?  How will the decisions I'm making today impact this coming day?  My sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews...will they know I think of them daily?  Will my church family know I treasured them?

This morning, David spoke of what Christ did, "for the joy," and tonight I experienced a bit of that joy. A family.  A homecoming.  One last journey together.

When my boys were little, David and I read the book Endurance to them.  "By endurance we conquer," Ernest Shackleton said.  We decided this would be our family motto.  I had forgotten.

Now I remember.

"By endurance we conquer."

"If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going."  Shackleton.





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